Pages

Sunday, December 13, 2015

En stjärna gick på himlen fram - A star is moving through the sky

D R A F T

Swedish psalm for epiphany to the tune of the medieval German carol A child is born in Bethlehem/Ein Kind geborn zu Bethlehem/Puer natus in Bethlehem -- melody is perhaps best known to Americans through Praetorius' setting ... old, old medieval German and Latin macronic hymn. Details at http://www.bach-cantatas.com/CM/Ein-Kind-geborn-zu-Bethlehem.htm on the Bach Cantatas website. It was one of the first hymns, beginning as early as the 1200s, in which the congregation played a role.

In Sweden, it was moved from Christmas to Epiphany. Words attributed to Johan Olof Wallin, who compiled the hymnal and translated many of the hymns from the German.

[Google translation:] A star was in the sky until a Epiphany hymn, originally Latin Christmas songs from the 1300s. The two last verses (No. 6 and 7) is "ståverser". Psalm processed by Laurentius Jonae Gestritius and printed after his death the first time in 1619. The hymn was translated likely or processed by Jesper Svedberg, 1694, into a hymn of twelve verses and the title line "A child is born of the virgin reen, of virgin reen" the 1695 Act hymnbook . Processing of printing of the 1819 Act hymnbook has no specified originator, but in the 1937 hymnal stated that Johan Olof Wallin processed text 1816 to a hymn with seven verses and a new title bar. Prior to the 1987 hymnal was processed by the Anders Frostenson in 1977 and the participation of previous authors no longer sets.

This Christmas hymn was especially popular during the ancient period. Its author is unknown. The oldest Latin text found so far is contained in a Benedictine book dating from the beginning of the fourteenth century. The Latin text, which is found in many different redactions ranging from six to twelve stanzas, has, very likely, been composed by several authors. Consequently, it has undergone many changes due to omissions, revisions, and additions. “Puer natus” was translated into German in 1439 by Heinrich von Laufenberg. Later on a number of German versions appeared. In the old German, Danish, and Swedish hymnals a translation in the vernacular was inserted immediately after each Latin stanza. It has been surmised that the choir sang the Latin and the congregation sang translations of the same. The German rendering most extensively used was that found in Val. Babst’s Gesangbuch, 1545: “Ein Kind geboren zu Bethlehem.” This contains ten stanzas with the German translation inserted after each stanza except the second. The English version included in The Lutheran Hymnary was made by Philip Schaff and was printed in his Christ in Song, 1869. There are at least eleven other English translations.

In regard to the third stanza, Skaar quotes from the hymnological works of Daniel: “On many early medieval paintings representing the nativity of Christ, as well as in Christmas hymns, are found an ox and an ass. This practice has been ascribed to a faulty rendering of the passage, Hab. 3:2: ‘In the midst of beasts make known’; for ‘In the midst of the years make it known.’ They concluded from Is. 1:3 that the two ‘beasts’ referred to were the ox and the ass: ‘The ox knoweth his owner and the ass his master’s crib.’ These passages are taken to be the Biblical basis for the old Christmas stanza: ‘Cognovit bos et asinus, quod puer erat Dominus, Halleluja’ (The ox and the ass knew that the Child was the Lord).” Nutzhorn claims that the expression is rather. an “innocent desire for free poetic representation of the circumstances surrounding the nativity of Christ.” [Dahle, Library of Christians Hymns]

No comments:

Pages

About Me

I'm a retired English, journalism and cultural studies teacher at Springfield College in Illinois (acquired by Benedictine University and subsequently closed). I coordinate jam sessions for the "Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music" at Clayville Historic Site and the Prairieland Strings dulcimer club, and I sing in the choir and the contemporary praise team at Peace Lutheran Church in Springfield. On Hogfiddle I post links and video clips for our sessions and workshops on the mountain dulcimer (a.k.a. "hog fiddle"), as well as research notes on folklore and cultural studies, hymnody and traditional Anglo-Celtic and Scandinavian music. I also posted assignments and readings in my interdisciplinary humanities classes. The Mackerel Wrapper (now on hiatus), carried assignments and readings for my mass comm. students. I started teaching b/log when I chaired SCI-Benedictine's assessment committee, and reopened it as the privatization of public schools grew increasingly troubling and closer to home.